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The steeple is no longer the tallest point in this French town. (Photo credit: REMY... [+] GABALDA/AFP/Getty Images)

The idea of 100% renewable energy has essentially become a religion whose central tenets and prophets cannot be questioned.

By Joshua Rhodes

A passionate critic of nuclear energy, Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson has pulled the nuclear option in trying to use the legal system to defend a controversial paper he wrote that provides a roadmap for the U.S. to go 100% renewable using only wind, water and solar sources.

As reported in Climate Progress, Jacobson has decided to sue Dr. Christopher Clack and one of the nation’s top academic journals, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), over an article Clack published in PNAS that criticized the methods used in a paper Jacobson authored (also published in PNAS).

Jacobson’s suit had many academics rightfully scratching their heads, rolling their eyes, and thinking “You have got to be kidding me.” Reviews and negative feedback are part-and-parcel of a researcher’s career and a hallmark of the science community’s drive towards a finer understanding of the world. Responding to the criticism of other experts is a way to establish credibility. But, issuing a lawsuit instead sends a signal that scrutiny and feedback are no longer welcome.

In my opinion, this is not likely to end well for Dr. Jacobson, whose petty sideshow hurts all involved. It will likely detract from the work of two otherwise extremely smart individuals and be a major distraction for others.

For years, Jacobson has been building an impressive body of work that details his vision to provide 100% of the U.S.’s (and now, most of the world’s) energy from wind, water, and solar only – WWS for short. He and his team of researchers at Stanford have developed detailed roadmaps for all 50 states, which, along with other analyses, were summarized in a 2015 paper that laid out a pathway to obtain all energy inputs for the U.S. economy (i.e., electricity, transportation, industrial, etc.) from 100% WWS resources.

The paper was hot news in academic circles. Jacobson’s claims raised eyebrows among many scientists, a not uncommon occurrence as it seemed he started with a desired answer and went backwards, whereas the scientific method goes the other way.

Fast forward about 18 months to June 2017, when Prof. Clack, along with an impressive group of co-authors—including colleagues at Stanford— published a paper in PNAS that criticized Jacobson’s earlier work.

The Clack paper focused on roughly four aspects of Jacobson’s headline-grabbing paper: modeling errors, implausible assumptions, insufficient power system modeling and inadequate scrutiny of the input climate model.

While there is substance to each of Clack’s four targets, the thrust of his criticism focused on Jacobson’s assumption of the amount of hydropower capacity that is available to meet power demand. In his paper, Jacobson assumes an increase of roughly 10x -15x existing hydropower capacity, which he further assumes could run all at once for ~12 hours at a time. While exact details are not provided, if the Grand Coulee dam in Washington State were increased in power generation capacity 10x, this would require a sustained release of nearly a trillion gallons of water in any given 12-hour period, more than half the dam’s active reservoir capacity. Moreover, such a release would be more than enough to cause significant environmental and agricultural damage and displace tens of thousands of people.

Despite growing academic concern over these and other assumptions in his paper – including, but not limited to Clack’s critique – Jacobson told the MIT Technology Review that his original paper was error-free – a cardinal sin in academia, a sign of arrogance as it implies that his work is above scientific scrutiny.

Much inkwas spilled about the debate this past summer, with rounds of counter and counter-counter rebuttals from the two central figures, and others, in this very public airing of academic laundry in academic, popular, and social media outlets. This debate should have remained in the academic peer-reviewed world, which while slow and imperfect at times, could have been authoritative. But it didn’t. Jacobson has taken it to another level altogether (the nuclear option) by filing a lawsuit against Clack and PNAS to the tune of $10 million each.

To some, the idea of 100% renewable energy has essentially become a religion whose central tenants and prophets cannot be questioned. If this orthodoxy was broadened, even slightly, it would allow room for level-headed debate. After all, many scientists – including Jacobson and Clack – essentially agree that the technology exists to get us almost all the way there – i.e., to meet our energy needs with significantly less carbon emissions. There is a difference in a 100% carbon-free energy system and a 100% renewable energy system, in my opinion having the former as the goal gives us more options than the latter.

At a time when science is under continual attack from politics and other outside sources, the last thing we need is a circular firing squad. There’s room for compromise, but not for fervor. Instead of attacking one another in the courts, we need to adopt an all hands-on deck attitude to figure out how to stave off the effects of climate change and improve the health and well-being of this country and the world. We might not agree on all the details, but that needs to be ok.